


To miss life.

by Kimmy



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: AO3 Tags - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, James Whump, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-14 08:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5736994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimmy/pseuds/Kimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His name's Bond, James Bond. He's agent 007. Or is he?</p><p>(He's so much more.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fucked.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tsuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsuyu/gifts).



> Please note this fic is an AU in that it features the characters at different age than in the original movies. Bond is 33, and Q 29.
> 
> Why? Because I like my characters young and vunerable... *evil smirk*

James Bond was not a man easily loved. But neither was he one to give his love easily. Contrary to popular belief James wasn’t a very sexual being. 007 was. But 007 was a mask. A steady front of falsehood and pretending, one that James had been maintaining for a long time now. First as an orphan, and then as an MI6 agent, he learned that masks were a necessary means of self-preservation.

As an agent, 007 was no stranger to close encounters and the concept of lust and physical intimacy that some people easily mistook for love. But sex and love were two different things altogether. James knew this all too well, there being too much of one, and too little of the other in his life. He lost his virginity to a mission, forever married himself to his work, committed his life to England. She was his first, and she would be his last. His country was all he had. Or so he had thought.

007 was an agent, a trickster, a womanizer. But James? James was a romantic. A lonely soul, but not a loner, never that. He may have put on a mask of unapproachability at work, but inside James was dying for someone to know him, accept him and love him. James wasn’t really sure if he even knew what love was, he had certainly never tasted real love, but over the course of his life, he stubbornly refused to give up hope. He kept it, cherished it, and sometimes indulged in it, because he knew – without it, without hope, he may not be able to resist the temptation of ending this miserable life altogether.

James had gone through a number of dalliances in the line of his work, forced to sleep with men and women, force attraction and whisper love words without meaning. Sometimes it broke him, having to use and dump someone as if they were worthless, while outside his career he might have been honestly interested in them. It broke him every time and he always regretted it, but never went back, not even in his mind. He deleted the names and the appearances from his memory, because as much as he craved love, falling for a mark would end in nothing but more pain and loneliness.

And then of course, there was Vesper. His one and only, if brief, encounter with something akin to a true romantic feeling. And as much as he tried his hardest to erase the shadow she left over his emotional self from memory, she at least had given him a valuable, if cruel, lesson on the difference between love and infatuation.

Enter Q. After Skyfall, Bond was a wreck. He still felt the loss of M keenly, even if he sometimes hated the woman. She was harsh, impatient and everything but likeable, but she was also the closest thing he had to a mother figure, or at least his grounding pillar, if nothing else. After her death he had no idea who he could trust. It also caused him to doubt the competence of MI6 without her steady leadership. He was a wreck. A sinking ship. A bloody big ship plummeting down to meet his end. But Q caught him, led him though the Skyfall fiasco, thus proving his competence and trustfulness. But above all that, Q offered James his friendship even when he thought 007 would just snarl at the offer, despite how much he needed it. 007 didn’t snarl. He smirked. And James was on cloud nine.

Of course, nothing could ever be that simple. Slow development of friendship into relationship only worked in real life – as in the life of normal people. Unfortunately, the spy rom-coms also didn’t quite get it right – in reality there was much less love and a lot more bullet wounds. So James has always known that an outside-work relationship was out of question. And MI6 employees always steered away from the double ohs, even if James found any of them interesting. So of course it was just his luck for the one person he had finally fallen for to remain frustratingly oblivious. Really, what spy brought their quartermaster that amount of exotic tea blends from their missions? Apparently, Q was downright blind. Even in his glasses. Just James’ luck.

Frankly, Bond has gotten used to disappointment in his life, and would probably be painfully alright with the friendzone. He really would be. Friendship was always better than loneliness.  But at the moment, as he ducked into another dark alleyway, running for his life as he was  chased by a human trafficking ring that he was actually supposed to be chasing, and realizing with pure terror that it was a dead end, he suddenly found it in himself that even if it was fate for him to die without ever tasting true love, he didn’t want to go with everyone thinking he wasn’t even _capable_ of loving.

Fully aware that there really was no way out this time, with a high brick wall at one end and a group of angry criminals at the other, he didn’t bother giving a report (Q had been watching it all himself on the live feed anyway, he took the earpiece out, brought the tiny, but powerful microphone to his lips and whispered, quietly, barely audibly, for Q’s ears only.

“I will haunt you in the afterlife, you blind, beautiful fucker. I love you.”

Then, without thinking, before he changed his mind, he threw the earpiece on the ground and crushed it under his foot. That wasn’t even a suicide mission. It was the end. And knowing that, James proceeded to take the mask off and then kill 007, forever. 007 had information, dangerous information, and if he was dying anyway, James might as well die without him, his own broken self.

* * *

 

Thousands of miles away, a mug shattered against the floor as the signal disappeared, the agent’s final words still ringing in Q’s ears.

_Fuck. I love you too._


	2. Fucked.

Q has always been a loner, or so he had thought. He had always said that he preferred his own company or that he enjoyed being alone best. In high school he repeated that to concerned colleagues so often that he finally realised he was fooling himself. He wasn’t a loner. He was lonely.

Of course, finding that, he decided a prospect of admitting the fact and making friends was too scary, so he put on a mask, kept repeating he was fine even though he knew better and instead he bought a better laptop. In Uni, Q faced it that no, the coding didn’t cure loneliness either, so making friends would probably be necessary. Plural terrifying him as it was, he decided the traditional concept of tying oneself to only one person for life had far more appeal. Q decided he needed a girlfriend.

Things only got more complicated after that, as in the search process Q discovered that he would really rather prefer a boyfriend. He took up another degree, in psychology, which did nothing to help him understand his homosexuality. After graduation and three disastrous dates with his first and only… partner, for lack of a better word, he resigned himself to loneliness.

And then MI6 offered him a job. So much for even trying for a relationship. But as isolating as the life of secrecy seemed, it didn’t turn out completely awful. MI6 was a closed community of quite friendly people. So even if didn’t exactly make friends, he now had something akin to acquaintances. And he actually truly loved his job. So he got himself another cat and even though he was still quite lonely, he not only tolerated, but even accepted that. It was as good as his life would ever get. So it was alright.

Enter 007. When they first met, Q really wanted to slap the man. He was quite young at the age of 33, that making him only 4 years Q’s senior, but he was an MI6 agent for a decade already, half of that time a double-oh, which made him by the standards an old and experienced agent. (Due to their life expectancy, the retirement age for a double-oh was a ridiculously low 40 years old, but even those who lived to that moment rarely took it. A life of a double-oh was a high-risk solitary existence sacrificed purely to Queen and country.) So yes, Q supposed 007 did have reasons to be proud, what with his efficiency and skill, but that didn’t quite yet give him the right be an arrogant, smug bastard.

And yet, Q found himself quite taking to the man and decided to help him through the whole Skyfall fiasco. Turned out when James Bond wanted to, he really could be quite professional. And when Skyfall was over and Bond returned so different from the smug agent from the National Gallery, even if he was trying to put on a calm front that said otherwise.

But maybe it was because it mirrored his own, that Q noticed the loneliness eating Bond from the inside after Skyfall. So as much as he was snarled and smirked at with condescending contempt, Q offered Bond support and friendship. In the end it was grudgingly reciprocated, the silent sorry and thank you passed from Bond and followed by exotic tea blends brought home for Q from missions, Q in turn made sure the newest gadgets worked on by R&D were given to a certain double-oh to test, even though he always ended up mourning their loss as a result, and a playful banter replaced cold professionalism over the comms.

Q noticed the person in Bond no one else did and it eventually blossomed into a friendship. A cautious and distant one, but a friendship nonetheless. And then Q also noticed the blue eyes in Bond and an unwanted categorization of the agent under ‘gorgeous’ followed. Q was fucked.

Some would describe the friendzone as one’s own, personal hell. In a way it was. Work had certainly become much harder when on top of concentrating on getting 007 out of tight spots, he also had to constantly push back very inappropriate yearning at the sound of that rich, smooth, _pulchritudinous_ voice. But as much as Q wanted more, he understood and cherished the friendzone. Because the friendzone was not something degrading, neither was it something lacking. It was friendship, pure and real, and full, undeniable friendship. Just… nothing more. And Q wanted more, and couldn’t stop himself from wanting more, even knowing Bond did not. But friendship was alright.

Friendship was brilliant and playful and heart-warming. And above all, friendship was something, as opposed to nothing. Friendship was the best thing in the world compared to the very awkward ‘Yes, we’re friends, but no, not anymore, because you’re attracted to me and that makes me uncomfortable, because I’m not gay.’ avoidance. And only lacking in kisses and moving in together, this friendship with Bond was everything that Q had ever wanted in a relationship.

It was understanding smiles sent to each other in passing or during the boring meetings, it was hanging out in the background of the other’s office when they had too much free time during work hours (that mostly happened on Bond’s part), it was bringing the exotic tea blends in apology for destroying the equipment (again, Bond’s part). It was _comfortable._ It was like skipping the crush and infatuation phase to go straight into the couple since forever phase. And how Q wished it was real when in the dead of the night he clung to his pillow or one of his cats, because they were all that he had to cling to.

So when Q had heard James Bond declaring love to him of all people, because _James Bond loved him!_ , then annoyed, because really, _didn’t James had better things to do at the moment?_ and then terrified, because a glance back at the live feed made him realize this were a dead man’s last words. And as he heard the sound of the earpiece crushing and then silence, Q felt as if it were his heart breaking.

Fingers flying rapidly over the keyboard Q decided that he would move heaven and hell to get Bond out of there, dead or alive. He might even on a plane. (Or after a thought, send 006. Q trusted that agent and he would be decidedly more efficient. No sense giving the MI6 quartermaster panic attack for nothing.) One way or another, he was getting James back.

_Fuck. I love you too._

* * *

 

Thousands of miles away, James braced himself for the inevitable as the chase finally reached him.

 


	3. Just human.

Suddenly James was very, very scared. The men were closing in on him grinning like predators who just cornered their prey, which was actually a sadly accurate description of the situation. One big goon separated himself from the crowd and approached him with a very smug look on his face and James suddenly realised that he must have been trying to back away from the man, because he didn’t remember the wall touching his back before.

“What do we have here? Looks like you have no way out this time, agent.”

“Agent? I’m… --“

James tried to deny anything and everything, claim innocent, pretend to know nothing, pretend not to exist, just say something, anything in a pure desperation of escaping the accusations and what was sure to follow, but before he could finish the sentence the others moved forward and suddenly the air was knocked out of his lungs and he felt someone stuff some foul tasting fabric into his mouth, soon followed by another piece of it and topped with a thick layer of duct tape that went around his head several times.

His brain briefly registered the hell it would be to rip the tape off where it stuck to his hair, but he couldn’t spare it much time as now that he was gagged and unable to either explain himself or call for help another thug pushed him to the ground and as soon as his face connected with hard concrete a huge weight settled on him. The man who just sat on him grabbed his hands and proceeded  to strip James of his jacket, then rolling his sleeves and roughly tying a coarse rope around his wrists and elbows.  The man made sure the bonds were around the bare skin, so there was no way to slip out of them and pulled them tight enough to cut circulation.

Another man took off his shoes and socks and he felt cold metal of the cuffs snap around his ankles. Someone dragged him up violently and started to lead him out from the alley. The uneven concrete was painful under his bare feet and the cuffs made it impossible to walk normally, so he tried to tiptoe at a furious pace but still kept tripping every few meters.   They reached the end of the alley and sunlight revealed a black, nondescript van with an open trunk and two other thugs loitering around, making sure no one disturbed the action. James felt cold fear wash over him with the realisation that this was probably the end – no way out, nobody will see him and call for help.

Someone put a black bag over James’ head and in that sudden darkness he was unceremoniously shoved in the car trunk, only to feel a piece of rope digging into his ankles around the cuffs as he was tied even more securely. Then pain shot though him when someone violently grabbed the rope now binding his ankles and forced his legs to bend, fastening it to his wrists. He was gagged, sight deprived and hogtied in bad guys’ car trunk. Not good. And as much as James tried to tell himself to calm down, that this wasn’t his first time, that he was kidnapped countless times as 007, it was as if the mask took all the experience with it when it dropped and he couldn’t recall how he dealt with that blinding panic before.

He was only human. Just a person. Just James. And he just wanted this to be over and to curl up in Q’s arms and never leave the safety of the boffin’s hug. He just wanted Q. As a boyfriend, or friend, or just his quartermaster, as long as it was within the safety of MI6’s walls.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a random quote on love by a guy apparently named Leo Buscaglia, who wisely observed "Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life."
> 
> Love, hugs and kisses. You can pay back with kudos and comments.


End file.
